The Shadow Mask Read online

  “So what’s that Spiricom record, Jeremy?” I cut in.

  Jeremy tugged at his beard and seemed to fumble for words. “It’s nothing, just this stupid record I was always promising to give him. Did he ever mention it to you, Leo? Because he was always bugging me for it. It’s really not that …”

  “Did you ever give it to him?”

  “Uh — uh — I’m not sure, Leo. He gave me that cave album six months ago, or so….” Six months! I thought, exactly when he wrote his will.

  “Where is the record?” I asked.

  “Maybe I still have it, I don’t know.”

  Jeremy looked down and nervously fidgeted with the handmade silver ring he always wore. He’d been our tutor for over a year, and he always answered our questions truthfully, no matter what we asked. It wasn’t like him to avoid a subject.

  “Will you look for it, Jeremy? I mean, if it was that important to my dad, I’d like to hear it.”

  “Leo, there’s twenty thousand records in my back room.”

  “It’s really important to me.”

  And it was, suddenly. Maybe that record would tell me something about the trip to Antarctica, about the crash, maybe give me a clue to their secret life, if they had one. Jeremy could tell I wasn’t going to let the subject go.

  “Okay, Leo. I guess I could take a peek,” he muttered nervously, and scurried off into the back room.

  “He’s lying to us,” I said as soon as he’d left.

  “And you’re lying to me,” Hollis said, looking at me with eyes that said, “Who are you?”

  “I’m not exactly lying,” I said to him. “Just leaving a few things out.”

  “Whatever is going on here, Leo, you should tell me,” Hollis said, his voice cracking with anger. “Everything that’s happening to you is happening to me, too. I have a right to know. I’m not just your stupid baby brother.”

  I looked over at Trevor. He was nodding.

  “He’s a smart kid,” he said. “He’ll handle it.”

  “Handle what?” Hollis was yelling now.

  “Okay,” I said, taking a deep breath. I’d practiced this speech a hundred times, trying to figure out the best way to tell him, so he would believe me, so he wouldn’t be hurt or confused, so he could believe that I was the same brother he’d always known. I’d had it all worked out in my mind, but when I was face-to-face with him, I couldn’t remember where to start.

  “We don’t have a lot of time, and I’ll talk to you more about this later, but you know how I found that dolphin helmet in one of Crane’s crates?” I began.

  “Yeah,” he said sarcastically, rolling his eyes.

  “Well … I didn’t just find it by luck. I have this … this ability, or power.”

  “Power? Oh, great. Meet my brother, Spider-Man.”

  “Hollis, just listen. I can hear sounds from the past. When I touch certain things. It’s this type of psychic ability. I know this sounds weird, but you have to trust me that it’s true. Remember that package I got that first day we moved into Crane’s?”

  Hollis didn’t answer. He looked at me as if I was a stranger and he was a lost child.

  “You remember,” I continued. “It was from Dad. He’d sent it years ago….”

  “Shut up, Leo,” Hollis snapped. “Just shut up.”

  “Hollis, listen. Inside the package was a letter about how I was actually born on an island in the South Pacific, and how their holy man initiated me into the island’s tribe and gave me a new name. Dad included a strange blue disc, which had a recording of my naming ceremony, and after I listened to it, suddenly I had this new power. This ability. I can hear the past, just by touching things. I know it’s hard to believe, and I’m sorry I kept you —”

  “Trevor,” Hollis said, deliberately looking away from me. “What’s wrong with Leo?”

  “Nothing, as far as I know,” Trevor said. “He’s telling the truth. I don’t believe in magic, and I think he should be examined in a lab, but I’ve seen him sound bend with my own eyes. He’s not lying to you, and I’m pretty sure he’s not sick or crazy.”

  “Hollis, think it over,” I said. “Think about everything that happened right when we moved in. You’ll know I’m telling the truth. I had to lie to you, because this ability is powerful and we don’t understand it yet. I’ll prove it to you. I’ll show you the letter and the blue disc with my ancestral name. But you have to promise not to tell anyone. Not a single soul.”

  “Don’t worry, Leo, I won’t tell.” He laughed uncomfortably. “I don’t want to brag about the fact that my brother is a total mental case.”

  “I’ll tell you everything about it, I swear. You have to believe me.”

  The door jingled, and a howling wisp of ice crystals swirled into the warm store, followed shortly by the stench of old water and eggs.

  “Albondigas time!” Steve shouted, holding the take-out bag triumphantly over his head. The soup smelled pretty rotten. Or maybe it was Stinky Steve. Or maybe both.

  Hollis walked over to Steve to take the soup — probably just to get away from my gaze. He hadn’t gone three feet when he stopped dead in his tracks.

  “Oh, hey, Dmitri,” he said, and my heart stopped beating. “When’d you get here?”

  My eyes flicked all over the store, and finally I saw Dmitri’s head poking above a rack of records. He was sitting on a ledge by the door. I only saw his face, his pulled-down beanie, and his beady eyes, black like shards of obsidian. He wasn’t covered in ice crystals like Steve, and he didn’t seem to be cold. How long had he been hiding there? Had he heard everything? Would that little spy take everything he knew directly to Crane? Feel nothing, I chanted to myself. Feel nothing.

  “What took you so long, Dmitri?” I tested.

  “I called Stump to come get us,” he said, ignoring my question. “He wants us in the car right now. The storm is getting worse, and he still has to drive home one of Crane’s associates.”

  “Dmitri, do us a big favor and tell him they’ll be right out,” Trevor said in his deepest voice, one that almost sounded like his puberty voice.

  “Hey, what about the albondigas?” Steve said.

  “I’ll drink it,” Dmitri said, and snatched the bag, looked around the store in quick suspicious glances, then headed outside to the parked limo.

  “How much did he hear?” I whispered to Trevor as soon as he was out of earshot.

  “Keep it together, Leezer,” Trevor answered. “Dmitri probably just came in with Steve. We would have heard him. Just keep cool. Even if he heard something, I doubt he could put it all together.”

  “Yeah,” I said, but I didn’t believe him. “Hollis, not a word to Dmitri.”

  Hollis pursed his lips and shrugged.

  “Hey, what’s up, guys?” Steve said, confused by our nervous huddling, and suddenly without the soup. “And where’s Jeremy?”

  “Right here,” Jeremy said. For a brief moment before the door closed, I could see into the back room, and not a record was out of place. I don’t think he had looked through them at all.

  “You find the record?” I said, half asking, half accusing.

  “No, but don’t worry about it, Leo. It’s just this stupid record. Guys, keep your heads down, stay out of Crane’s way, and come here after school every day until we figure this out. You guys gonna be okay till then?”

  “I am,” Hollis snapped. “Leo’s the one you have to worry about.”

  Dmitri stuck his head in the door.

  “Stump’s about to lose it,” he called.

  “You guys better go,” Trevor said.

  “Come on, Trev,” I said. “I’ll get Stump to drop you off, he owes me one after driving off without me this morning.”

  We left the shop for the cold, dry icy air. The ice crystals were a foot thick in places, and the way the wind tossed them it was impossible to tell whether the ice was falling from the sky or being picked up from the ground. It sort of reminded me of footage I’d seen of
inland glaciers, where the air is so dry there’s no weather systems, only frozen ice being blown around. We ran for the open door of the limo, glowing purple inside, and slammed it. Dmitri was sitting up front with Stump, drinking his soup straight from the container. In the back, there were three cups of steaming hot chocolate in the drink holders.

  Just as I took my first sip, Stump lurched the limo forward, and I burned my mouth.

  “Stump, you’re killing me,” I said after swallowing a mouthful of scalding hot chocolate. He didn’t say anything, but he kept glancing at me in the rearview. “And thanks for this morning, too,” I added. “That was a real gutsy move, buddy.”

  “Sorry about that, kid. I’ve been feeling rotten about that all —” But then he stopped, and I noticed Dmitri giving him a strange stare. His tone of voice changed immediately. “Just doing my job,” he added quickly. “You understand. I gotta eat, right?” He looked at Dmitri who had just fished a meatball out of the container and was gorging on it.

  “Guess so.”

  We drove at a snail’s pace. Through the tinted windows, everything was dark smoke and ice and the occasional dim light blinking or swirling by like some sort of energy creature. Stump kept trying to gun it, but then the tires would spin and the engine would make a grinding sound. From what I could see, the city seemed deserted. And it was so quiet. The only sounds were the ice crystals hitting the windshield, the engine revving every now and then, the howling but muffled wind outside that seemed almost half alive, the tires crunching, and our slurping sounds and “ah’s” as we drank. I recorded it all until we dropped Trevor off.

  “See you tomorrow, Leez. Text me back this time.”

  All the bridges were closed, so Stump took the Midtown Tunnel to Brooklyn, but so had everyone else still on the road. I’d never been sure about the tunnel, whether it went underneath the riverbed altogether, went along the floor of the riverbed, or was just a tube going through the water. Whatever the case, we were stuck forever. Stump kept muttering and cursing under his breath, but Hollis and I were silent. We couldn’t talk with Dmitri around, even though he was pretending to be asleep. Maybe it was better that way. We both had a lot to think about. Hollis, I’m sure, was trying to figure out how he could rely on me when I turned out to be a completely different person than he’d imagined, someone completely unfamiliar.

  But this was feeling familiar to me. I had a fleeting sensation that all these events outside of my control were connecting, starting to line up, in a way I couldn’t yet explain. I felt like even though I was sitting in Stump’s limo, a different part of me was somewhere else. I didn’t know where my life was leading, just that I felt a strong pull in an unknown direction.

  When we finally made it out of the Midtown Tunnel, it was a complete whiteout.

  As the limo rolled at a tank’s pace into our neighborhood, the scene outside the window reminded me of an Antarctic outpost in the dead of a polar night. I didn’t let myself imagine that for long. We pulled up in front of Crane’s Mysteries, and before we had even come to a full stop, Klevko came running out of the building in a short-sleeve T-shirt. When he reached out to grab my shoulder, I flinched like a frightened puppy, remembering his rough handling of Mike Hazel. But Klevko was just being affectionate, and anyway, maybe Mike Hazel deserved Klevko’s rough handling for digging around in other people’s lives.

  “Beautiful weather, beautiful,” Klevko sighed, and stared off dreamily. “Reminds me of my childhood in Poland. Cold weather warms the soul, no?” It must have warmed his, because he was dripping sweat. He led us into the tiny lobby with its old-fashioned metal elevator. He opened the small door to the basement apartment where Klevko, Dmitri, and Olga lived.

  “Matka made you delicious soup with ground meat, Dmitri. Go eat,” he said, tousling Dmitri’s crew cut as he disappeared through the little door into their dingy basement apartment. But as soon as Dmitri was inside, Olga came rushing up to the little door, hollering at Klevko in Polish. Klevko bent down and hollered back at her, and they began a tremendous argument, all in Polish. At one point, Olga even stuck her wooden spoon through the little door and shook it threateningly. They argued and wrestled over the spoon until Klevko was able to jam both it and Olga’s voice back inside. He closed the door.

  “That woman never leaves me alone. I have such a pleasant evening. I see you boys come home, and enjoy the nice weather, and as soon as I go inside, whack.” He smacked his hands together to illustrate.

  Hollis and I just watched in amazement. Our parents rarely argued, and when they did, it was usually over what music to put on during dinner. And there was certainly never any wooden spoon involved.

  Klevko checked his watch, then hurriedly shooed us into the elevator, pulled the metal gate closed, and engaged the up lever with such force that I slammed against Hollis when we took off.

  “Get off me!” he snapped.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled. Hollis was clearly in a bad mood, and I couldn’t blame him.

  Even though our apartment is on the penthouse floor, the elevator screeched to a stop on the fourth floor. Somehow I knew that only I was getting out.

  “Leo …” Klevko started.

  “I know, I know. Crane waits.”

  “Yes. Boss wants to see you now. He waits.”

  I turned to Hollis. “Wait up for me, okay?” I asked him. “I’ll try to explain everything.”

  He didn’t answer. I reached into my backpack, pulled out my digital recorder, and gave it to him.

  “Here, take a listen. I recorded some stuff for you today … for the piece you’re writing.”

  “Are these real sounds, or … you know … Leo’s special sounds?” he whispered.

  “They’re real, bro. From school. You’ll like them. Maybe when I’m done with Crane, we could just hang out, listen to them, and make some music or something.”

  I saw Hollis’s face soften. This was the Leo he knew.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Okay. That would be cool.”

  Then I felt Klevko’s hand give me a friendly shove out the elevator, and I was alone on the fourth floor.

  I stepped out and waited for the elevator to lurch upward, then looked around to take in my surroundings. Aside from our penthouse, all the floors of Crane’s warehouse looked alike, and the fourth floor was no different. It was a vast open room lined with rows and rows of wooden crates, each crate labeled with a number written in black ink. Ever since I took the dolphin helmet, I hadn’t been allowed to go into the warehouse on my own, but I had seen enough from my earlier explorations to know that each of those crates contained something amazing — rare dinosaur fossils, ancient Greek urns, clay tablets from Egypt, jewelry from the kings and queens of Europe, lost paintings by dead masters. No one was permitted to ask Crane how he acquired these rare treasures. Maybe that’s why he called his business Crane’s Mysteries.

  I heard Crane’s lizardy voice echoing up and down the maze of aisles. He was laughing, and I knew he had turned up the charm. I could hear that there was a woman with him, and she had a booming, almost operatic laugh that made the whole floor seem slightly less menacing.

  I followed the voices until I found him. Crane was wearing a black suit, black shirt, and black tie, the only splotch of color coming from his red silk pocket handkerchief. Even in the dim light, I could see his diamond pinkie ring flashing as he waved his hands in animated conversation. With him was a stylish middle-aged woman with long black hair, wearing lots of flowing scarves, dangly earrings, and several necklaces with what seemed to be wooden carvings hanging from them. They had paused in front of a smallish crate, from which Crane was carefully lifting out a mud-encrusted burlap bag.

  I recognized it right away as the bag that contained the one half of the twin mask my father had brought back from Borneo, the one I had told Crane I knew all about. Oh yeah, I had also promised to help him find the other half, too. Crane suspected the mask might be a rare find, half of a legendary Siamese twin mask. If it was
the real thing, and if he could find its matching half, it would be worth a fortune. Naturally, that was music to his ears.

  “You wanted to see me, Uncle Crane?” I asked.

  Crane put the burlap bag down on top of the crate and wheeled around as if he were thrilled to see me.

  “Leo!” he cried. “There’s my nephew! Come say hello to an old friend of mine and yours, Dr. Margaret Reed.”

  The woman turned toward me, gasped, put her hand over her mouth, and shook her head in mock surprise as if she couldn’t believe what she were seeing.

  “My, how you’ve grown up!” she said.

  “Indeed he has,” Crane agreed. “He’s got my brother Kirk’s face.” Then he reached out and pinched my cheek. “But with more robust cheeks, wouldn’t you say? He’s got room to put two weeks of acorns in there.”

  He let out a belly laugh, and I was glad to see Dr. Reed didn’t join in.

  “Leo’s just home from his tutor,” Crane said to her, switching tracks. “His education is my highest priority, just as my dearly departed brother, Kirk, and his beloved wife, Yolanda, would have wanted.”

  Dr. Reed smiled at me. “I doubt you remember me, Leo, but when you were about four years old, our families spent a summer together in Madagascar. Your father and I were collaborating on a field study of native instruments. He was fascinated by the bamboo tube zither.”

  “Ah yes, the bamboo tube zither, that sounds like Kirk,” Crane said, smirking.

  “Are you a professor, too?” I asked her.

  “I’m an anthropologist,” she said. “I teach here in New York, but my true love is to do field research. I specialize in the tribal life of Borneo.” Dr. Reed came closer so I could see her face clearly. “Now do you remember me, Leo?”

  “Sort of,” I lied as she took my hand, pressed it, and rubbed my shoulder.

  But at her touch, I started to see hazy images in my mind, and I heard the croak of a bullfrog as clearly as if it was sitting on a lily pad in front of me. Other sounds cropped up, too, the buzz of dragonfly wings, the rustle of palm trees in the wind. Quickly, I let go of her hand.